The Blood Spilt

YELLOW LEGS

Spring is coming. The odd patch of snow beneath the blue gray pines and the tall firs. A warm breeze from the south. The sun filtering through the branches. Small animals rustling about all over the place in last year’s grass. Hundreds of scents floating about in the air, like in a stew. Pine resin and the smell of new birch leaves. Warm earth. Open water. Sweet hare. Bitter fox.

The alpha female has dug a new lair this year. It’s an old fox’s den on a south-facing slope, two hundred meters above a mountain lake. The ground is sandy and easy to dig out, but the alpha female has worked hard, widening the entrance so that she can get in, clearing out all the old rubbish left by the foxes, and digging out a chamber to live in three meters beneath the slope. Yellow Legs and one of the other females have been allowed to help sometimes, but she’s done most of the work herself. Now she spends her days close to the lair. Lies in front of the entrance in the spring sunshine, dozing. The other wolves bring food. When the alpha male approaches her with something to eat, she gets up and comes to meet him. Licks and whimpers affectionately before gulping down his gifts.

One morning the alpha female goes into the lair and doesn’t come out again that day. Late in the evening she squeezes out the cubs. Licks them clean. Eats up the membranes, umbilical cords and the placenta. Nudges them into the right place beneath her stomach. No stillborn cub to carry out. The fox and the crow will have to manage without that meal.

The rest of the pack live their lives outside the lair. Catching mostly small prey, staying close by. Sometimes they can hear a faint squeaking when one of the cubs has wriggled in the wrong direction. Or been pushed out by one of its siblings. Only the alpha male has permission to crawl in and regurgitate food for the alpha female.

After three weeks and a day, she carries them out of the lair for the first time. Five of them. The other wolves are beside themselves with joy. Greet them carefully. Sniffing and nudging. Licking the little ones’ rotund tummies, and under their tails. After just a short while the alpha female carries them back into the lair. The cubs are completely worn out by all the new impressions. The two one-year-olds hurtle joyfully through the forest, chasing one another.

It’s the beginning of a wonderful time for the pack. They all want to help with the little ones. They play tirelessly. And the rest are infected by their playfulness. Even the alpha female joins in a tug-of-war over an old branch. The cubs are growing, they’re always hungry. Their muzzles grow longer and their ears more pointed. It happens quickly. The one-year-olds take turns to lie on guard outside the lair when the others go off hunting. When the adults return, the youngsters come forward, tails wagging. Begging and whimpering and licking the corners of the older wolves’ mouths. In reply the adult wolves bring up red mounds of the meat they’ve swallowed. If there’s anything left over, the babysitters can have it.

Yellow Legs doesn’t go off on her own. During this period she stays with the pack and the new cubs. She lies on her back playing the helpless prey beneath two of them. They hurl themselves at her, one sinks his needle-sharp teeth into her lips and the other attacks her tail like a mad thing. She pushes the one who was dangling from her lip aside and places her enormous paw on top of it. It’s all the cub can do to free itself. Wriggling and struggling. Finally it escapes. Gallops around her on its fluffy paws, comes back and throws itself at her head, growling recklessly. Bites her ear aggressively. Then all of a sudden they fall into a deep, peaceful sleep. One lying between her front legs, the other with its head on its sibling’s stomach. Yellow Legs takes the opportunity to have a little doze as well. She snaps half-heartedly at a wasp that comes too close, misses, the sleepy hum of insects above the flowers. The morning sun rises above the tops of the pine trees. The birds swoop through the air, hunting for food to regurgitate into the gaping mouths of their babies.

Playing with cubs makes you tired. Happiness flows through her like spring water.